Bildad Kaggia

Bildad Mwaganu Kaggia ( born 1921 or 1922 in Dagoretti, Kenya; † 7 March 2005 in Nairobi ) was a Kenyan politician and key figure in the independence movement.

Biography

Kaggia came from a peasant family and worked as a teacher. During the Second World War he served in the King's African Rifles of the British Army.

On his return to Kenya in 1946, he became a militant trade unionist who is actively engaged in the East African trade union movement, which gave the Kenyan independence movement at a critical time the necessary trade-union support. Because of this commitment, he was in 1952 by the British colonial authorities along with Jomo Kenyatta and Kungu Karumba, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei and Achieng Oneko ( " Kapenguria Six" ) arrested after the Mau Mau uprising and not released until 1961, after the lifting of martial law.

After independence, Kenya on 12 December 1963 he was appointed directly to the Vice Minister of Education, but in 1964, again dismissed after he put the ability of the national government in question. He accused the government of President Kenyatta's hogging of lands and corruption. The offer Kenyatta to transfer the ownership of a larger trading estate, he refused under the hint that he would have fought for the Kenyans and not for himself and thousands of landless Kenyans, which supported the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule, own land more necessary would he.

In 1966 he renounced his seat in parliament, which he had won as candidate of the Kenya African National Union (KANU ) to stand as a candidate founded by Oginga Odinga Kenya People's Union ( KPU ) for the upcoming parliamentary elections. However, after he was defeated in the elections, it quickly came to a break with Odinga. After another unsuccessful candidacies for a parliamentary seat in 1969 and 1974, he withdrew from politics and threw Kenyatta right to have hampered his political career. Due to renewed criticism of Kenyatta in 1969 he was beyond. For six months in prison In 1975 he published his autobiography, " Roots of Freedom 1921-1963 ".

In 2005, he died in poverty in a slum of Nairobi.